Clients retain attorneys to provide needed legal services. Clients often hire managers to supervise the performance of retained attorneys. These “legal process managers” (“LPMs”) may be in-house at the client or may operate from outside the client. Traditionally, LPMs have been used primarily to monitor the fees and costs incurred by attorneys in providing legal services. The LPMs strive to ensure that monitored attorneys stay within authorized budgets and do not unnecessarily drive up costs (by, for example, conducting unneeded work). For this purpose, LPM web sites have been used to monitor attorney budgets and invoices.
LPMs may also guide the actions taken and decisions made by the monitored attorneys. Recently, LPM web sites have been used in the field of security interest enforcement actions. The web sites provide a template intended to guide attorneys through the legal processes related to these security interest enforcement actions. The template provides a short static list of predetermined “daisy chain” milestones to the attorneys being managed. An attorney is expected to complete each milestone by a requested date and to indicate that the milestone has been completed by filling in the completion date on the web site.
In addition to the work performed by attorneys, brokers may also be involved in security interest enforcement actions with respect to particular types of property. For example, a broker may enter into a cash-for-keys agreement with a non-paying occupant, such as a tenant, wherein the occupant is given money to voluntarily relinquish occupancy of the property before a specific date. In general, such actions or agreements entered into by the broker are not readily known to the attorney working with the same occupant or property. As a result, situations may arise in which the attorney improperly pursues court action (e.g., eviction) against an occupant who has already voluntarily left the property in accordance with a cash-for-keys agreement.
Systems have been developed that create projections of the amount of time required to complete the prosecution of a security interest enforcement action. Such systems have been used by Fidelity: First American; McCalla Raymer, LLC; DRI Management Systems, Inc.; Indymac Bank; and Fair Isaac Corporation (dba LenStar). Each of these systems is based on a deterministic timeline management model that identifies static “milestones” and that allocates a predetermined unchangeable time to complete each milestone. These static milestones are an inaccurate reflection of the actual timelines followed in prosecuting security interest enforcement actions, and as such provide a poor structure by which to assess the performance of attorneys in prosecuting same.